ii8 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



and within the Northern border-line of the country, by 

 Kirkwhelpington — the pace good, though half the pack 

 had, if I mistake not, slipped aside on another fox. Then 

 a truly wild, often wet, country, laid out in immense 

 yellow-green fields, with now and then a stone-faced bank, 

 now and then a wall, with the inevitable weak spot whence 

 the coping-stones had been flung; these to be jumped or 

 scrambled, as the case might be. Thus, moving rapidly 

 forward, hounds reached Howick, on the border of the 

 moor ; marking their fox to ground in the gully of Sw^eet- 

 horpe, just before the plantations of Howick. A very 

 sporting run. 



Of the field of the day the following are a few names, 

 viz.: Mr. J. C. Straker ; Rev. J. and Misses Allgood ; Mr., 

 Mrs., and Miss Fenwick ; Mr. and Mrs. C. Straker ; Mr. 

 and Mrs. M. Fenwick ; Mr. S. and Miss Clayton ; Misses 

 Swan ; Miss Leadbitter ; Messrs. C. W. Henderson, 

 Wallis, M. Liddell, F. Straker, T. Bell, Kirsopp, Ward, C. 

 Hall, Colin Ross, H. Swinburne, Sanderson, H. and R. 

 Blackett, Blayney, Dent. 



Among the many hapless incidents of the season 1891- 

 92, Mr. Tailby's breaking a leg is one of the most recent 

 and most regrettable. It threatens, unless the undefeated 

 spirit rises once more in defiance of deliberate conviction, 

 practically to end a hunting career that already numbers 

 forty-seven seasons. 



One cannot fancy Mr. Tailby — nor, I believe, could he 

 fancy himself — either trotting about on a pony or galloping 

 the roads for a possible point. He has ridden as keenly 

 as a boy, and as hard as an undergraduate, up to this very 

 year ; and it would, no doubt, go sorely against the grain 

 for him to ride to hounds in any other fashion. His 

 exuberant enjoyment of the chase, especially in its most 

 dashing phases, has ever been a delight to witness, and a 

 lesson (as I have read it for a score of years) encouraging 

 and gratifying to men far younger than himself. The 

 hardiest frame cannot go on being knocked about for 

 ever. Mr. Tailby has probably had more bad falls over 

 High Leicestershire than any man alive. And, though all 



